Artisode; 1.1; Christina Sporrong

It's such a tactile field, it's a very physical experience. It's empowering and awesome all at once. We are at Spitfire Forge in Towson, Mexico. I'm a blacksmith, I'm a welder, I'm a fabricator, I'm a teacher, I'm an aerialist, I'm an aerialist. Back in the day, every village had a blacksmith and they would do everything, make the nails for the houses that were built, they would fix your pots and pans.

It was as essential as a doctor. It is still a predominantly male trade, it's also a dying trade. The amount of work it takes to do things by hand, there's just no economy to support that anymore. I definitely have a huge attraction to metal and iron, and I mean it's in us, it's in our blood, it's part of our composition as people. There's something so visceral about it. There's a lot of fear, I think, and intimidation, maybe more than fear, around this medium. The tools are commonly associated with something guys get to do, so there's a lot of demystification of all that. It's not high tech at all, it's like we're using fire to heat it up and then we're using water to quench it, you know, it's very, very basic. These are mackets or models of the heron crane.

It's three huge cranes that range from 24 feet to 36 feet. My two passions working with my body and then working in steel, how do those two mix? You know, you shake it up and out comes this weird sculpture that you can play on. I don't walk into the shop ever and feel like I'm afraid of anything.